Re: Evan Williams Single Barrel - best vintage?

96 EWSB was the one that got me hooked on liking Bourbon last year. I thought to myself, "all this for $22 when good scotch starts at ~50 a bottle?!?!" (not that I was huge a scotch fan anyway, but I digress...) Since then, I have always kept my eye open for these when hunting. So far I have picked up a couple of 95s, 94s, and I found one 92. I have the 96, 95 and 92 open. Even though I really like the 96, I like the 92 better.

It is somewhat fitting that while the 96 was the one that started me on bourbon, the 92 I found was kind of my first "dusty corner" find. The store had 5 bottles of 96 all lined up. I had just about given up looking at all of them, but for the heck of it, I grabbed the 6th and last bottle in the back and just about dropped it when I saw it was a 92. Ever since then I have been hooked on dusty corner searches.

Re: Evan Williams Single Barrel - best vintage?

I must admit, I've not had many of the various years of the EWSB. I purchased my first bottle (that I opened) in March....a 1996. I loved it and it was gone is less than a week (shared by others of course). I now have two more '96's and 2 '97's. My brother has a '91 that he IS going to share with me....

“Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.” - P.J. O’Rourke Greg's "bourbondork" blog

Re: Evan Williams Single Barrel - best vintage?

Without trying to find all the links, I had seen several people pan the '92, so I'm surprised to hear it was rated so highly in Chuck's group.

This brings up a question I have been meaning to ask as there seems to be a good deal of variability in the ratings of certain vintages.

Does anyone know if all the barrels pulled for a certain vintage come from the same place in the warehouse? Heck, do they even all come from the same warehouse?

I'm pretty sure that I've read on here that HH tries to keep the taste the same within each vintage year, but I find this pretty amazing when you consider they have to pull 700+ individual barrels! Surely there must be some variation, correct?

Re: Evan Williams Single Barrel - best vintage?

I have had the 1995, which I found fair. It was a little on the sweet side, and seemed a little light in flavor. There was a good bit of vanilla, not much in the way of spice IIRC. Not something I would drink regularly. The 1992 and 1994 I have sought since reading through old threads and seeing them mentioned consistently as good whiskey. I found a 1992, but no 1994 to this point.

Re: Evan Williams Single Barrel - best vintage?

This brings up a question I have been meaning to ask as there seems to be a good deal of variability in the ratings of certain vintages.

Does anyone know if all the barrels pulled for a certain vintage come from the same place in the warehouse? Heck, do they even all come from the same warehouse?

I'm pretty sure that I've read on here that HH tries to keep the taste the same within each vintage year, but I find this pretty amazing when you consider they have to pull 700+ individual barrels! Surely there must be some variation, correct?

I think the variability in rating has more to do with variations in what different people like than in variations in the whiskey itself, although between the vintages and it being single barrel there is variation.

Seven-hundred barrels seems like a lot and it is, objectively, but relatively it's not so much. Heaven Hill has nearly a million barrels in storage and dumps close to 200,000 a year.

Barrels for EWSB will all be from the vintage year and spread pretty evenly throughout that year, but they will tend to be drawn from the same or similar warehouse locations, typically the top two floors.

I haven't had any of the "late" 1996 bottlings, which based on the barreled-on dates are post-fire and are, therefore, contain whiskey distilled at Beam. I have had the made-at-Beam 1997 and found it very different from previous years, and not as flavorful, but I'm glad some people like it. I think EWSB has been a great program and a great example for the rest of the industry.